Viewing page 59 of 103

This transcription has been completed. Contact us with corrections.

THE VICTORIA HOTEL
CANTON

TEL. ADDRESS:
"VICTORIA, CANTON."

TELEPHONE 13501

19

channels. 

Have you ever met Mr. Pawley of The Intercontinent Corporation in Shanghai? If not I suggest you call on him at his office on the eighth floor of the Development Building. Tell him that I asked you to call. I am sure he will be interested in you. He is a very close personal friend of General Peter Mow of the Commission of Aeronautics and also of General Chen, the head of the Hangchow school. I am sure he will be glad to give you an introduction to either of them, if you have not already met them.

How about interesting yourself in promoting the idea that the government should allow private flying. I believe it is very short sighted that they do not. They do not give very good reasons against it. They say that groups of insurrectionists might purchase private airplanes to be used against the government. But the government could easily limit the horsepower of the motors on private planes so that they would be useless for military purposes. Another objection I have heard is that planes would be used for smuggling opium, but this seems ridiculous as all the available ports and emergency fields are military and such activities would be quickly detected. If private ports were built they could be easily and cheaply policed. All planes and pilots should be license as in the United States and pilots could be required to report in and out when flying from one port to another.

The big benefit of private aviation to the government is as an aid to national defense. At the present time all pilots are trained at government expense. Millions of dollars are spent each year on training military aviators. If private air schools were allowed many aviators would be trained at their own expense who would constitute a reserve personnel in time of national emergency. The United States has a very small air force compared to many other large nations; but their thirty five thousand licensed private and transport pilots is the largest potential airforce in the world. And most of these thirty five thousand pilots have been trained at no expense to the government. 

Also in a country like China where distances are so great and roads and railroads so few, encouragement by the government of private and transport aviation is a necessary and progressive step. It aids trade and promotes the easy intercommunication of peoples which is so necessary to btter understanding and national unity.

These are just a few random thoughts, rather trite, and probably they have all occurred to you before. Anyway I wish you luck and hope that when I am next in Shanghai I may have the pleasure of meeting you---at last.

Sincerely,
Louis Dooley